Wikipedia:Requests for comment/John Henry

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1 Statement of the dispute
2 Response
3 Outside view
4 Discussion

[edit] Statement of the dispute

This is a summary written by users who dispute this user's conduct. Users signing other sections ("Response" or "Outside views") should not edit the "Statement of the dispute" section.

[edit] Description

User User:John Henry aka 'Long John Silver' aka 'Honest Abe' aka User:DEastman also posting as '209.247.222.89' and '66.43.173.74' has conducted a persistent attack against the Wikipedia NPOV policy. In an obvious attempt to inject spurious propaganda into articles and delete relevant content he has repeatedly harassed other users, engaged in revert warring and subtle edits to introduce spurious propaganda. He is currently abusing the Copyright violation policy, arguing that articles on important current events should be deleted entirely on the basis of inclusion of images.

The user has so many accounts and changes so frequently that there is no single representative account. This pattern of use is clearly a strategy.

[edit] Evidence of disputed behavior

[edit] Under the Username John Henry, bad faith allegations of copyright violations violating WP:POINT and WP:SOCK

The most recent example of this pattern is a series of edits to articles relating to Jack Abramoff. First a large and significant piece of text relating to the SunCruz scandal is deleted [1]. Abramoff was a co-owner of SunCruz and was indicted for defrauding Boulis of $23 million. The indictment of three mob hitmen for the murder of Boulis would be relevant to the story even if Abramoff and his partner had not paid the alleged hitmen half a million dollars.

After simple revertions failed the entire article is posted as a copyviolation [2]. Note that Henry restores the material he alleges to be violating copyright in order to be able to mark the article as a copyright violation. In discussion Henry makes a series of defamatory accusations. [3]

Henry made a similar series of edits on a linked article on the Abramoff-Reed Indian gambling scandal, in this case arguing that the entire article should be speedily deleted on the basis of an alleged copyright image. Deletion of the image in question was not good enough. Abusive edit comments are defamatory and allege bad faith 'Your continued criminality is an embarrassment to wikipedia'. [4]

The importance and relevance of this article can be seen by the fact that Abramoff's ties to Ney are the subject of a Washington Post front page article [5]. The tone of the Wikipedia article as written by the editors attacked for 'extreme LW POV' is essentially the same as the Post piece which naturally mentions the murder of Boulis which 'John Henry' repeatedly removed and objected to as 'bloggish LW nonsense'.

[edit] Revert Warring as User:209.247.222.81 User:209.247.222.85 User:209.247.222.89 User:JimmyCrackedCorn User:138.162.0.37 and User:DEastman violating WP:3RR and WP:NPOV

Using a series of sockpuppet accounts the user established a pattern of revert warring on a number of current affairs articles. In each case the edits were clearly intended to advance the same POV, articles affected include Ray Nagin, Able Danger and First responder.

The user installed a POV article at the First responder redirect to Certified First Responder. While POV is inevitable when editing an article on current events the editing of a purely descriptive page to inject POV content on a current event is inexcusable. The second paragraph of the new article begins "A breakdown in command and communications among the local and state government first responders after Hurricane Katrina". Despite the fact that this type of material has no place in the article the user reverted it four times, [6].

The 209.247.222.xx IP accounts appear to be NAT ports on a firewall at a Naval installation. The 138 address is probably his home. It appears that there might be other users on the 209.247.222.xx ports but the only edits are vandalism. It does not appear likely that the user is a lawyer as he has asserted,

The user violated the 3RR this morning on Ronnie Earle, removing references to Jack Abramoff, the individual who ran the PAC investigated by Earle and who would probably have been indicted by Earle if he was not under indictment already in Florida. Edit [7] 1st Revert 13:11, 15 October 2005[8] 2nd [9] 3rd [10] 4th (as DEastman) 02:05, 16 October 2005 [11]

[edit] Uncivil Behavior and Personal Attacks violating WP:CIV and WP:NPA

The user has a consistent pattern when using a new sock. At first the sock concentrates on making POV edits, then as the edits are reverted out and it becomes obvious that the account is a sock he begins attacking others as 'liars' " I wonder if that lying, whiney, paid political hack crackpot Gorgonzilla is as embarrassed as he ought to be. -- Swamp Foxx 138.162.0.37", "As much as you National Socialists hate the idea even FoxNews people have freedom to believe and vote as they wish." [12]

There is much much more in the same vein. Indeed the uncivil behavior and the particular epithets used are one of the chief means used to identify the sockpuppets. Scanning through the histories of any of the accounts turns up personal attack after personal attack.

Talk:Able_Danger shows the user making use of sockpuppets to reply to and concur with his own statements. First he attacks User:Gongonzola as a liar, then agrees with himself. unfortunately he has difficulty keeping his accounts straight and ends up posting as 'Honest Abe' from his home system.

[edit] Evading block for revert warring violating WP:SOCK

Despite being blocked for violating the 3RR the user continued to edit from other IP addresses and created sockpuppets with attack names:

17:03, 15 September 2005 Hall Monitor blocked "User:Gorgonzillasothersockpuppet" with an expiry time of indefinite (inappropriate username, sock puppet)
13:53, 15 September 2005 Katefan0 blocked "User:66.43.173.74" with an expiry time of 24 hours (Second 3RR violation on Ray Nagin)
22:18, 14 September 2005 Khaosworks blocked "User:66.43.173.74" with an expiry time of 24 hours (3RR violation on Ray Nagin)
22:18, 14 September 2005 Drini blocked "User:66.43.173.74" with an expiry time of 24 hours (3RR)

[edit] Bad Faith 3RR Complaint

The user filed a false 3RR complaint while breaking the 3RR himself as noted above [13]

[edit] Legal Threats violating WP:NLT

The user has made statements claiming to have reported others for copyright violation. This appears to be intended as legal harassment violating WP:NLT [14]

Then you should be happy to know you have convinced me to report Gorgonzilla's crime to the image's owner. He is an embarrassment to all Wikipedia, wikipedians and producers of intellectual property everywhere. Why are you trying to cover for his criminality? --John Henry 05:05, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

BTW - I have added a report of your covering for Gorgonzilla's criminality to the images owner. I can't imagine Wikipedia will approve of that, can you? --John Henry 05:08, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism of Girls Aloud and other pages violating WP:POINT and WP:VAND

Yet another Nym has been created User:ExpertTag - by JimmyCrackedCorn Which describes himself thus:

I am JimmyCrackedCorn and I am annoyed that admins removed Ray Nagin and the Evacuation by School buses controversy.

OK so why did you delete it then - it is NOT a POV fork?

This account's entire history up to the point it was blocked consists of vandalising pages on minor celebs by sticking the expert tag on them [15]. The block on this account coincides with the sudden disappearence of 'John Henry' from Wikipedia.

The article was removed after a very clear vote for deletion which would have been even clearer without all the socks.

[edit] Applicable policies

{list the policies that apply to the disputed conduct}

[edit] Evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute

(provide diffs and links)

My contribution to Gorgonzilla's 3RR (regarding this user's repeated reverts of the Ray Nagin article )[16] --Jentizzle 07:40, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Users certifying the basis for this dispute

(sign with ~~~~)

Gorgonzilla 12:59, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
CSTAR 22:48, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Jentizzle 07:41, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Other users who endorse this summary

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RyanFreisling @ 13:49, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Hipocrite - «Talk» 19:01, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
--chris.lawson 00:41, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Guettarda 01:11, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
BD2412 ^talk 04:41, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Response

This is a summary written by the user whose conduct is disputed, or by other users who think that the dispute is unjustified and that the above summary is biased or incomplete. Users signing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Outside Views") should not edit the "Response" section.

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[edit] Outside view

This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users editing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Response") should not edit the "Outside Views" section, except to endorse an outside view.

This... rings a few bells. A while back I tangled with 132.241.245.49, another user who seems to have a thing for the Abramoff-Reed Indian Gambling Scandal and every article that links to that and more. His edits - and there were dozens of them daily - were almost uniformly drivel, either of very poor quality, lengthy quotes from news articles or plain commentary with loaded language ("infamous" and so forth). The IP isn't listed above, but Gorgonzilla suggests that there are many more sockpuppets involved. -Ashley Pomeroy 22:06, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

I took a look at 132.241.245.49 it does not appear to be the same user. The articles and POV are both different.--Gorgonzilla 13:58, 19 October 2005 (UTC)